


where the heart is (then we're all just fucked)

by Trojie



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Ghost Of You Video, Alternate Universe - World War II, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Consent Issues, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, M/M, Serious Injuries, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, this is basically the Bastogne episode of Band of Brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-15 21:32:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11239671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: Bastogne is cold, Gerard has a deathwish, Ray is out of morphine, and Mikey has been dead since Normandy. So what's even the point any more?





	where the heart is (then we're all just fucked)

**Author's Note:**

> a) yes the title is from '27' by Fall Out Boy  
> b) look, people were calling for a Ray/Gerard 'Ghost of You' AU so I ANSWERED THE CALL, OKAY. In my own way.  
> c) don't worry I'm about to put MYSELF in the corner to think hard about what I've done  
> d) my thanks to uglowian for letting me babble this at them in chat and the all caps peptalk when I was done

Gerard is smoking out past the OP again. It's dark, but Ray knows that slouch from when it used to be the school gym propping that awkward body up, not old-growth, sticky-sappy pine trees. He can also see the fucking glow from the end of Gerard's smoke, jittering in and out like a firefly as Ray picks his way between the trees and his sightlines shift. 

It's bright and obvious in the gloom, as good a goddamn target as Ray's ever taken aim at, and the Germans are dug in right up to the line. Gerard is going to get himself shot and Ray can't convince himself that it's not exactly what he's trying for.

'Don't you have someone with trenchfoot to harass?' Gerard asks as Ray stamps on up to him over the frozen ground, but he says it with no heat in his voice. He offers Ray his smoke. Ray doesn't take it. 

'Y'know, those things'll kill you,' he says on autopilot.

Gerard shrugs. 'They didn't get Mikey,' he says, huffing a tight, harsh laugh full of smoke into the winter air. His mouth curves into a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and Ray knows it's supposed to be a joke. 

It lands like a punch, though, and Ray almost walks away from him. He has to force his heels down into the dirt to stop himself from turning, because that isn't fair, that _isn't fair_. He curls his hands in his pockets into fists. Gerard looks at him sidelong, almost like he's disappointed. 

Is punching your friend in the face, when they want it, an act of care? Or is not punching them an act of cruelty? The fact is, Ray isn't a very good medic, but who the fuck is when all your supply lines are cut? 

Ray can't do anything about the source of Gerard's pain, anyway. 

The cold and the silence and having to sit tight and wait to be shelled - that's just what this war is like. But Gerard, after Mikey … There's nothing you can do or say or be to help someone with the pain when it's all in their head. You can give them hot food, or hot something that can be eaten, at least, even if it has the nutritional content of hay and the taste of a dead horse. You can give them a cigarette. Chocolate, if you have any. You can put your arm around them, or you can - and that's where Ray stops. Because. People do. He does his rounds of the trenches when he can't sleep and he hears things. It probably does help, for some of them, but it's sure as shit not something Ray can dole out like aspirin. 

He's Gerard's friend. He's Gerard's _medic_. You can't just lay hands on. Not like that. 

'You need to sleep,' he says quietly. 'It's not your watch, soldier. C'mon.' 

Gerard lets himself be pulled back to their foxhole, flicking the butt of his smoke to the ground and grinding it under his heel into the icy mud. Ray bundles him under their meagre cover and they shift around, trying to settle. 

The ground is hard. Ray's ass has been numb since they landed here. That isn't why he doesn't sleep, though.

Nights like this, where they're dug in together like ticks into the wounds they're ripping in the good soil of Bastogne, when Gerard's weight and pale fragile warmth are heavy against Ray's body and he tucks himself in tight, mouth against Ray's throat where his scarf and collar don't quite cover everything, and Ray trembles and doesn't move - these kinds of nights, Ray misses Mikey fiercely.

Mikey always knew what to do with Gerard, when Basic was hard and Gerard's grip on the world got a little shakier than it ever used to, you'd find them hunched together on Gerard's cot, talking, and the next time they had to go for a ten mile run in full gear, or do the assault course, or, fuck, whatever, Gerard would be better.

Ray doesn't know how to make Gerard better, not like that. Ray doesn't know how to be better when he has Gerard's mouth huffing warm breath against the thin skin where his pulse is hammering. He pulls his arms around Gerard and tries to keep him warm, at least, insulate as much of him as possible against the frozen ground. 

Ray dozes, eventually. When he wakes up, Gerard is gone. But that's not unusual.

He stumbles out into the wet grey dawn for a piss. On his way back from today's unfortunate tree, he gets given ... something ... for breakfast, and they're scraping the bottom of their cups out and bitching collectively about pancakes when overhead, the whistling roar starts and everyone dives for cover. 

Ray ends up basically throwing Frank Iero into the nearest hole and they're piled up, huddling in the dirt like scared puppies as around them shells fall. It's only ever by the grace of whatever passes for God anymore that the hole you scramble into isn't the one a shell falls in after you, and Ray's practically trying to dig himself deeper by fingernail alone when the cries of 'medic!' start up along the line and he realises that the thudding horror has stopped. 

Frank boosts him out of the hole and passes him something stuffed into the palm of his hand that turns out to be syrettes of morphine, three of them. Not US issue. 'Got them off a body,' Frank says gruffly, and Ray doesn't ask how the body became a body because he knows all about Frank's fiercely hidden but very soft heart. 'Didn't have a chance to get them to you before now.

' _Medic!_ ' someone bellows, it sounds like Sergeant Hurley, and Ray scrambles to his feet, trips and stumbles and fumbles the morphine into his pockets and finally makes it to where there's .. a foot on the snow, red on white, black on red on white, and Ray thinks vaguely that he knows someone in the squad - Trohman, it's Trohman, his toes are going wet and grey - needs boots.

There's not much screaming, probably because there's so much blood. Wood splinters make for fucking horrorshow wounds, worse than the shrapnel, god, Ray sometimes fucking yearns for a clean goddamn gunshot and then abruptly wants to throw up for even thinking it. 

He wants to throw up now. Hands paddling in barely clean linen and blood and mud and churned up snow. Ray remembers a gunshot wound. Ray remembers a beach. Ray bites his own lip til it bleeds and puts pressure on the gouting mess of the leg that's in front of him.

Hurley's radioing in for a jeep. Ray doesn't have any plasma. The jeep might not be necessary. The bleeding subsides.

'Is he gonna lose the leg?' Hurley asks. Ray doesn't actually know who he's working on. He ... it's hard to look at faces, like this.

'Well I can't reattach his fucking foot,' says Ray. 'But the other leg might be okay... if we can get him into an actual aid station, maybe.' Ray has big hands, which he's thankful for every day. He stares down at them spanning the crimson bandage mess and keeps pressure and wishes for plasma. Wishes he'd had this practice, back on that beach. 

Three men died under his hands, died with him holding them down, before he saved his first one

The jeep comes and Ray's patient is still breathing, so they load him on careful and he goes away. Like the shells that fall on them, the body goes away but you know there'll be more, the same but different each time.

Ray trudges back to where he left Frank. Wiping his hands on his trousers only makes them duller and browner, and his hands the same, not cleaner. Stickier. He considers shoving his hands in the snow, which would clean them off and stop them … feeling … but he needs his fingers.

Frank, when Ray finds him, has Gerard, and Gerard has a splinter in his hand and a smear of blood on his temple and Frank is holding him up. 

'Fell over, huh?' Ray asks, pulling Gerard's bleeding hand away from his chest and out so he can see it properly. He's seen the injuries you get when you trip and fall in panic before. There's not a man in the squad who hasn't ripped his knees and hands open like this, though none of them likes to admit it.

Gerard just shrugs. 'Hit my head,' he says. 'Not sure what happened. '

'Fucking blacked out in the open,' Frank says accusingly. 'They coulda dropped a shell on your stupid ass, Gee.'

'Wouldn't have known,' says Gerard, shrugging again. 'Ow- mother _fuck_ , Ray, c'mon. Don't have to finish what the Nazis fucking started.'

Ray flicks the long, stained sliver of wood away and watches to see how fast the blood wells up, if he's gonna have to use one of his precious, dwindling supply of dressings to stem the tide.

It's sluggish, but it's persistent, and it's not crusting over fast enough. Ray fishes around in his pocket for something that was once about a third of a handkerchief. He ties it around Gerard's palm, then folds Gerard's fingers in. 'Pressure,' he says. 'Now let me look at your stupid head.'

Gerard's stupid head has a gummed-shut gash in the hairline and a shiner where he smacked his cheekbone and eye into what was probably a rock, from how blue it already is, but there's nothing much Ray can do about it except for try and wash the blood away with spit on a handkerchief, like someone's mom.

Gerard's breath catches a few times, shivering, and Ray makes a noise between his teeth because it must hurt and he's sorry for that. He peers into Gerard's eyes to make sure his pupils are at least roughly the same size, because a fucking brain scrambling would be just their luck right now, but he looks okay. Ray pets his red-blue cheekbone gently and lets him go.

Someone else is yelling for a medic down the line, though it doesn't sound life or death. Frank hasn't let go of Gerard, so Ray follows the noises rather than stay. 

More splinters to be pulled, from all sorts of places. And more, and more. The forest gives them cover but goddamn, it's saving the Germans money on fucking shrapnel. Ray gets splinters in his fingers off the splinters he pulls out of the men, and his mouth starts to taste of blood from where he absentmindedly wipes at his face, sweating bullets even in this frigid air. His hands hurt by the time the line is settled and the bleeding's stopped and everything is silent and white again. He stops to piss up against another tree.

They didn't tell him war would have piss breaks.

They didn't tell him he'd sit still long enough to have them.

Hell, he's probably getting flabby again after knocking himself into shape for Basic and through the landings and Holland and ... and everything. Sitting around in a forest is no ten mile run every morning. He needs a walk. And he needs morphine - used up Frank's contribution already, and that was all he had. And some fucking plasma, Jesus. 

If he'd just had - the blood loss is the thing, if the shock doesn't get them first.

He starts to stump his way down the line, telling himself this is a good idea. And even if it isn't, it needs to be done. He knows which direction the next company is in. Maybe their medic will have supplies to share. They're not gonna get hit twice in one day, that'd be a waste of artillery. They won't need him on the line. He doesn't realise he's taken a wrong turn until the silhouette in the distance resolves into a grey shape with the wrong helmet, by which point it's too late to do anything but fucking run.

There's a staccato burst of German behind him. He puts his head down and summons up everything he ever put into those stupid training runs. Close, too close, a gun goes off and Ray throws himself flat and starts to crawl for the trees, when an arm snags him and hauls him back up. 

'Fucking run,' snarls Frank in his ear, shoving him, and Ray's hands sting fiercely, he's done exactly what Gerard did, the blood smearing the crease of his heart line is his own now. 

Frank's pushing - Ray runs with him, fists beating each other's shoulders as they half shove, half carry each other. Just like in Basic, stick with your friends, stick with the pack, run together, just get through it and throw up on the other side if you got to. 

The gunfire still still rattles but the German yelling has stopped. Something isn't right, it slithers down Ray's spine with how not right it is. 

'C'mon,' Frank's yelling, but he's not yelling at Ray any more, he's calling out, he's waving wildly at something out behind Ray, something - someone - Ray can't see.

Ray turns around with his heart cold in his chest feeling like Lot or Orpheus or whoever. 

Gerard's advancing on the German line, _firing_ on the German line, all by his fucking self, and the fog's rolling in in waves through the trees, it comes and goes like a tide in the air, but there are more silhouettes coming visible. Ray's utterly fucking fucked if he's gonna pack useless gauze into another Way corpse. He's fucked if he'll be dragged off another body he can't let go of. 

Frank's yelling at them both to fall back, yelling for backup, just fucking yelling, but Ray's charging back the way he came hell for leather and Frank's right behind him and it's the whites of their eyes, right, the whites of their eyes you gotta wait to see before you - only that doesn't make sense when they have machine guns. 

Ray cannons into Gerard and wrestles the pistol out of his hand. After that everything's a blur. He doesn't know how they get back to their line, only that the magazine of Gerard's gun is empty when he makes it back and Frank's voice is gone and Gerard won't talk to him.

Hurley chews him out for getting that close to a German OP. 'You're my only medic,' he says. 'My only goddamn medic, Toro, what am I gonna do if you get yourself killed?'

'Sorry, sarge,' is all Ray has to say.

But all people do in Ray's care is die in a slightly more organised way, so he doesn't see what difference it makes, to have a medic if the medic has no supplies. He doesn't say that.

'Go and get yourself a goddamn hot meal,' says Hurley eventually, sighing. 'Get someone to give you a lift into town, get some food down you, go see what you can scrounge from the aid station for supplies, then get your ass back on the line, okay? And then fucking sleep. That's an order.'

'Yes, sarge,' says Ray.

Hurley eyes him. 'You sharing with Way or Iero?' he asks.

'Way,' says Ray, because if he says Iero then Hurley will try to give Frank instructions for making sure Ray's okay and Ray doesn't have the energy to be looked after right now. Hurley will also give the same instructions to Gerard, but Gerard is less likely to actually follow through. Maybe once he would have, sure. Not so much any more.

Gerard also cannot be trusted alone in a foxhole. Or ... well he can't be trusted to _stay_ alone in a foxhole. So someone needs to share with him. 

Hurley gives Ray a very long look, but lets it slide. It's not like he doesn't know what Ray knows.  
The jeep ride into town is painful. Ray's hip and tailbone are jarred from sleeping on hard ground and then falling even harder, and he's perched on the tailgate of the jeep for the miles on rutted dirt into Bastogne proper, and it's hell.

The meal is hot, at least. That's an undeniable fact of thermodynamics. Whether or not it's edible, or what it tastes like, are different, but there's a hot bowling ball in Ray's stomach afterwards that he guesses counts as a square meal.

He gets the deconstructed ticking off a bed as 'bandages' and he gets a couple of pints of plasma that looks fucking dubious to him but what does he know, he's not actually a doctor, and he gets a handful of syrettes, all jumbled together into a box, and then he gets the hell out of Bastogne, because the tight little buildings on the streets, the bricks, the cobbles ... they're crushing in on him. He cons a driver into giving him a ride back out to the line, and stares into his box of supplies til the terrain evens out again and there's sky down to the horizon in between the trees.

The sun's setting when Ray finally hop-stumbles off the back of the jeep and finds his way back to the CP. What that means is that watery grey light becomes velvety grey light becomes black while he trudges with his box of supplies.

He puts the stuff in his foxhole, but Gerard isn't there and that's exactly zero surprise, so Ray doesn't even bother getting in himself, he just hauls himself back up onto his sore feet and trudges down the line til he finds a hunched shape against a tree, yet again not even trying to hide the tiny firefly-light of a cigarette.

'You're gonna get shot,' Ray says. Again.

'Fuck you.'

Ray's sick of it, abruptly. 'You don't care, do you.'

Gerard's eyes are matter of fact, not bleak, when he looks at Ray, and Ray shivers. Someone's going to have to take the news to Gerard's mom, is the thing. The only comfort Ray's got is that Frank'll go with him, he knows he will. 'What?' Gerard says, and shrugs. 'It's gonna happen sooner or later.'

Ray takes the cigarette out of Gerard's hand and takes a drag of his own. He wouldn't do it with anyone else - nicotine's absolutely something people kill for - but Gerard's different.

He watches Ray's mouth hungrily, and Ray feels bad for taking even this much of a precious smoke away from him, so when he's finished breathing out, he gives it back.

'We'll get home,' says Ray. 'We just gotta keep our fucking heads together.'

Gerard laughs. He curls into Ray's body, the thin amount of heat they're both losing through their uniforms better shared than wasted out in the open air, and hands the cigarette back to Ray.

'We'll get out of this,' Ray insists. The cigarette tastes fucking awful. They always do. Ray's not much of a smoker, but it's something to do with his hands.

'With your shield, or on it,' Gerard muses, something weird in his voice.

He stamps his feet against the cold, burrows his hands in between their coats. The cigarette is down to the filter and burning Ray's fingers, so he drops it, scrapes it out then kicks snow back over the remains of it. Deja vu - he did this the other night. He does this every night. Bastogne is a godless wilderness but it has its own rituals. 

'Come on,' he says. 'We busted our asses digging that fucking foxhole, we might as well use it.' Gerard doesn't seem convinced but he lets Ray pull him back away from his fucking flirtation with the end of the line.

When they do get under cover, though, he can't stop fidgeting, twitches and twists til Ray's teeth are on edge.

'Can't sleep,' he says, which, when has he ever?

Ray, under the shit-smelling blanket they're sharing, hooks his arm roughly around Gerard's neck and pulls him close. 'Fucking try,' he advises. Gerard's helmet's askew but the edge of it still digs into Ray's collarbone.

Gerard's fingers are freezing when he creeps them between the buttons on Ray's shirt. Ray's breath hitches, because Jesus. It's like Jack Frost is feeling him up, but he doesn't want Gerard to lose his goddamn fingers on top of all the rest of this bullshit. So he lets it slide. He can share whatever warmth he has to spare. 

Slowly, even against the frozen dirt, they both stop moving long enough for heat to build up. It's thin and unsatisfying and Ray's bones still ache damply with cold that he doesn't think he'll ever get rid of now it's seeped in, but it's warmer than he's been in days.

Eventually Gerard's body softens into something like relaxation, but if this is sleep it doesn't seem very restful, from Ray's point of view. Gerard makes noises, and his knee jerks, like he's kicking. His mouth parts against Ray's throat, and the heat of his breath is a thrill on every exhale and shock on every inhale, when the freeze rushes back in.

Ray tries clumsily to stroke Gerard's neck, like he remembers his mom doing for him when he was sick or scared, but there's hardly any space between collar and scarf and helmet, and he bumps his knuckles and abrades the sore places on his fingers. He falls asleep trying, though, sitting up and wrapped around Gerard's rictus of a body. When he wakes, he's shaking, or being shaken. The _ground_ is shaking, and _Gerard_ is shaking and he's got one hand on Ray's shoulder and his eyes are the size of saucers. 'It's started again,' he says, unnecessarily.

Something whistles over the top of their dugout. Ray ducks instinctively at the same moment Gerard does, and the edges of their helmets collide with an unholy noise, and they catch, hold for a moment.

A shell hits close, too close. Ray jerks back.

'Medic!' someone yells and fuck, it sounds like Frank. Ray's out of the foxhole in a split second.

The accounting, when the shelling stops, isn't as bad as it could have been. Bryar's off the line, invalided back to HQ with a ruined leg, and Ray's wrist is gonna be bruised for a week after how fucking hard Bryar held on to it. He didn't know there were that many swearwords in the world. Frank's helmet got knocked off him but by some minor fucking miracle he's still got a head - it was him Ray heard yelling, cradling Bob's shoulders and trying not to look at his leg. 

Wentz took a lump of shrapnel to the shoulder, but it was a glancing blow, missed anything vital and didn't stick around. He contributes some more swearwords to the pile, face gone sweaty and pale as Ray does his best to pick metal out of everywhere he can find it and cover the mess with gauze. 

Not even twenty four hours, and Ray's 'supplies' are all but used again. He's gonna be down to 'kiss it better' as a medical technique if this goes on any fucking longer. His hands are bleeding again, so he shoves them, curled into fists, into his pockets and pretends he doesn't need a bandage because he doesn't have one he can spare right now.

'I know,' says Hurley, when Ray tries to pull him aside. 'What do you want me to do, Toro? We're stuck here, and the supply situation is what it is. The fog's keeping our planes out.'

Ray gets it, okay, he knows they have a supply line situation. He knows if anyone could magic medical supplies out of thin air they'd have done it by now. It's just. He hates knowing that no matter what he does, people will die. To be capable of helping but not able ... it aches

'Everybody dies,' says Gerard flatly at him when he finally finds his way back to their foxhole. He drags on his cigarette. Ray pretends to not see how hard his hands are shaking. He shouldn't have said anything. He just should have kept his stupid mouth shut.

'I mean like, just as a philosophical point,' Gerard adds sourly, when Ray doesn't reply. 'Well fucking earned nihilism aside ... we're finite animals, Toro.'

Ray looks at him, the weirdly flattened relief of his face thrown into dramatic light and shade by the cherry of his cigarette, the military haircut. The shaking hands and stubborn mouth, too. Ray can hardly recognise him as the same person he was when they used to play kickball together or hole up behind the music room with Mikey and Frank for a quiet place to smoke at recess.

Ray must say some of that out loud, because Gerard snorts and stubs out the smoke. 'What's that line?' he asks. 'The past is another country?'

Ray's too busy wishing like fuck he hadn't remembered Mikey smiling.

'It's not like you're a carbon copy of yourself either,' Gerard adds. 'Shit happens, Ray, and you ... you become something else.'

'I don't feel different," says Ray softly. 'Not underneath. Just ... tireder.'

Gerard lays his head on Ray's chest like he's trying to hear his heartbeat through his uniform. 

'Neither do I,' he says. 'I just ... who cares who I upset, any more? So what if I disobey orders? What can they do to me?'

'Firing squad,' says Ray, and it's meant to be funny but the joke dies a death when Gerard just shrugs.

The conversation dies a death there too. The night is long and dark grey with moonlight reflecting off snow. Ray holds Gerard against his body. It's all he's got any more

No bandages, no plasma, no morphine. No penicillin for Saporta, who's pissing needles. No help for Trohman, because Ray can't change the weather or help him dry his socks any faster.

This pathetic excuse for warmth, that's all he has left to give.

Gerard's fingers creep in between the layers of Ray's uniform. His thigh nudges between Ray's knees as he shifts against Ray's body, curls into him, heat-seeking. Ray's head sinks. He's dozy, with finally being at rest after moving all day, with the sick comfort-in-familiarity of the fucking foxhole after the unsettling horror of Bastogne, bombed to hell and still trying to act like a town. He drowses under the soft familiarity of Gerard, close like they used to get when they were young and stupid and there were four of them.

Something cracks - a gunshot - no, a twig snapping - too close, and Ray flings his head up but so does Gerard and their helmets clash, an awful noise of screaming steel that cuts the fragile peace. But it's nothing - they're breathing hard and their hearts are racing and it's for nothing. Gerard's fingers are warm against the skin of Ray's belly.

His eyes are very dark.

Fight or flight is pounding Ray's veins when Gerard licks his lips and says, like he's saying it to himself, 'who fucking cares anymore?' and presses his mouth to Ray's.

Ray cares.

Ray ... Ray catches Gerard's head and strokes his fingers across the broad splay of Gerard's cheekbones and kisses him back even though he doesn't know what the fuck is going on, because he can. He can give this.

He can figure out the rest of it later, the confusion in his head and the trembling hope in his heart and the ... whatever. Later. Now, he can give this. But something ugly curls in his gut even as Gerard eases his mouth open and the kiss becomes something deeper, because it's not just altruistic. 

It's fucked, he's fucked, but he _wants_ this. It's selfish and wrong and he's in a position of responsibility and he has a duty of care and he's not a doctor, okay, he's a medic, all that happened was he got fucking tapped for it, but he can't not take it seriously, and he can't not think about the day that he's pulling foreign objects out of Gerard's body and his fingers are slipping in blood. 

Mikey was gone before he knew it, Ray felt it happen under his hands, and he hadn't expected it. He can't do that twice. He knows he won't live through it again. So treating them all like ghosts now is a better tactic. But if he pushes Gerard away, God, if he pushes Gerard away right now …

The things Gerard needs he may never get again, but isn't it Ray's job to ... to replace blood with plasma, to put bandages over places flesh should be, to prop up and patch up and stop gaps? Ray opens his mouth under Gerard's and pulls him closer til their hips are rocking together, and in his head he calls it triage.

Gerard's hands were already under Ray's shirt. Now they're pulling at his belt.

Ray catches at him. 'We can't,' he whispers, painfully aware of the way sound carries across snow.

'Why not?' Gerard asks fiercely. 'They give us rubbers in our goddamn kit.'

'Because we're in a hole in the dirt,' says Ray. It's the shortest answer of a litany of answers that doesn't satisfy his own body and he knows won't satisfy Gerard either. 

Gerard keeps pulling at his hands, trying to wriggle closer to Ray, and Ray wrestles them over til he can pin Gerard against the concrete-hard mud. Ray doesn't like the feel of a body underneath him but he needs the leverage to keep the pressure where it's needed, to keep the control he needs. 'Because I don't want to get fucking frostbite on my dick,' he tries. 

Gerard's eyes are huge in the dark. His mouth is parted, soft and white-pink and his chest heaves. Ray shivers. He pushes his knee between Gerard's thighs, an alternative, a palliative. 'C'mon,' he mutters, rolling his hips to try and give Gerard the right idea. 'We can. Like this.'

Gerard makes a noise high in his throat like a fucking bomb coming down in pitch but stuttered and with no sustain, and he stretches up to kiss Ray again, desperate. Ray lets him. Ray tells himself he's just letting him. Ray is a fucking liar. He curves his hands under Gerard's ass, his knuckles grazing frigid grit and the slime of mud where their pitiful body heat has thawed the top layer, and steadies him as they grind together. Gerard's so fucking hard, it makes Ray's head spin. 

He bites his tongue against the urge to roll onto his back, pull Gerard with him. He has to keep this control, even though pushing down like this is fucking with his head, all his signals mixing up wrong. He just has to get Gerard through this and out the other side.

But. 'Are you - you're not -' Gerard says, breaking the kiss, voice shaky. He puts his own hand down between them, like he's looking for something. Ray's so turned on he can't think, so guilty he can't move, but he knows what Gerard's feeling for and what he's not going to find. 

Ray's not hard. He starts to turn red, can _feel_ it crawl up his skin before Gerard even gets a hand on him. But they do, before he can do anything about it - Gerard touches him through his trousers and his fingers are a shameful torture. Ray scrambles backwards, as far as the foxhole goes, which isn't far. They end up a handspan apart, breathing hard. 'Don't,' Ray says softly, before Gerard can speak. 'Not your fault.'

'Shit,' says Gerard, and he looks gutshot. 'Ray, I. I didn't mean to -' he's scrambling like he's gonna leave the fucking foxhole and _no_. Ray lunges back into his space, catches him by the helmet strap.

'Don't you fucking go out there, you suicidal moron,' he snarls. Gerard drops to his ass again. 

'Okay, okay, but I swear I'm keeping my hands to myself this time,' Gerard says. He won't make eye contact now. 'I didn't. Shit, Ray, I know you're not a ... I don't know what I was thinking,' he says, low and twisted and bitter. 

The thing is, Ray is a. A whatever. What Gerard is. Gerard's eyes are huge and painful and he's staring at his own knees. 

'Come here,' says Ray softly. Gerard looks up at him.

'I thought we couldn't,' he says. 'You don't want me, don't fucking play. I'm not an idiot, Toro.'

Ray shakes his head. 'That's not what - Gerard -'

'I'm fucking messed up,' Gerard says, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes. 'But I'm not a goddamn rapist.'

The silence between them as Gerard lights a smoke is as pregnant as the silence you get when you've been waiting all day for artillery to start up again. Gerard offers Ray the cigarette, after he's had a couple of drags. Ray takes it, chokes his way through a puff of his own. He still hates the taste but he's not stupid either, and he can recognise a peace treaty.

By the time the cigarette is down to the filter, Gerard's slumped against Ray's side again. Ray doesn't know what time it is when the gentle breathing he can feel rib to rib through layers of olive drab turns to hitched, quiet sobbing.

Long enough for the sting of earlier to have faded, the revulsion of the way he felt like he was resuscitating Gerard with every kiss to have ebbed, and only the aching need to make it better to still remain. He strokes Gerard's cheek.

Gerard blinks at him, his helmet (too big, the strap too loose) tilts back from his head, and Ray pulls him up to press their faces together. Gerard's eyelashes flutter against his cheek.

'I can't fix it,' he whispers. 'I'm so fucking sorry, Gerard, but I can't - I can't fix it.'

'I know,' says Gerard. His lips are ruined from the cold and the way he worries at them with his teeth, brushing Ray's skin. It feels inevitable when Ray's hands land on Gerard's hips, settling him up on his lap.

'Shouldn't do this,' Ray mutters, but he can't make himself let go.

Gerard ghosts his mouth at the corner of Ray's, at his cheek, the soft place under his eye, his ear, to say, 'if you want it, then you should.'

'Taking advantage,' says Ray, the words broken in his throat, as Gerard rocks against him and his dick finally reacts. He buries his face in Gerard's shoulder because he wants, God he wants, to not have to weigh his actions like this. Once upon a time they were stupid and careless together. 

Gerard starts to roll his hips. 'If it's not you doing it,' he says, his voice catching. 'if it's me, Ray, if it's all fucking on me, my fault, will you. Will that be okay?' He presses himself against Ray's chest and slides his fingers along the strap of the helmet under Ray's chin. 'Who cares what we do right now?' he asks, as if he can read Ray's mind, see all the threads tied back and reaching forward. 'Everything's changed. It isn't the same world it was any more, and it won't be the same world tomorrow. It won't be the same world after the next fucking shellacking they give us, Ray - it'll be a different world with fewer people in it. Maybe without us in it, who even knows. So all those rules?' he says, into Ray's ear, his lips wet. 'They don't matter.'

He finds Ray's belt, Ray's holster. 'Remember 'thou shalt not kill'?' he asks, dragging his fingers from the gun to Ray's crotch. He tilts Ray's head up so their eyes can meet in the dark. He looks like he's starving.

'They took everything away from us,' and he's not talking about the Germans, is the thing, Ray knows that. 'They stripped us down and they made us into this and they wouldn't give us things that weren't absolutely needed, because that would be a waste.'

Ray groans under him, grabs for him to pull him close. 'They gave us rubbers because they want us to fuck girls,' Gerard whispers. 'But I don't want girls. And I don't want to do what they say any more.'

He's been moving slow, so goddamn slow. Ray chews on his own lip rather than cry out the way he wants to, thinking about fucking, and Gerard lets his weight down a little more, a little more.

_I don't wanna have to remember this when I'm stitching you up_ is all Ray can think. He doesn't say it. He can't form words. He's leaking wet in his underwear and his teeth are death-clenched in the collar of Gerard's jacket because they can't be in his throat. Gerard is fumbling with someone's belt - Ray can't tell from the feel of it whose. They're a closed circuit between them and for the first time in a month Ray actually feels something like warmth - sweat, mostly, sweat and friction, but it passes for warmth in the way it burns. Then there's skin on skin and slick wetness and Gerard shhhing him with a finger on his lips and Ray can't help it, he comes like a heartburst between them with no warning

Gerard whines and shoves his fist between them. Ray fumbles to help, clumsy. Come feels different to blood when it's all over your hands and Ray wonders if the part of him that knows that is ever going to go away. 

He pulls Gerard's shuddering, spent body against him as tight as he can, because you have to keep pressure on wounds.


End file.
